


The Bones

by wirewrappedlily



Series: Each and Every Time [1]
Category: Shadowhunters (TV), The Shadowhunter Chronicles - All Media Types
Genre: Author is a madwoman, Canon-ish, Immortal Husbands, M/M, Magnus Bane Deserves Nice Things, Past Lives, don't ask just read it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23722948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wirewrappedlily/pseuds/wirewrappedlily
Summary: He sucks in a scared breath, and as if it's loud enough, even yards away, for the first man to hear it, his eyes flick up to where Alec is standing, flashing gold for the barest of moments before warm brown is back in place.
Relationships: Alec Lightwood & Andrew Underhill (mentioned), Alec Lightwood & Catarina Loss (mentioned), Alec Lightwood & Isabelle Lightwood, Alec Lightwood & Jace Wayland (Mentioned), Alec Lightwood & Maryse Lightwood (mentioned), Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Series: Each and Every Time [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1718866
Comments: 10
Kudos: 203





	The Bones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [giidas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/giidas/gifts).



The first time it happens, Alexander Gideon Lightwood is six years old, and understands enough to know that he's not what his parents had wanted in a son. 

It's a strange dream--though not in the way that most dreams are strange. Alec has always had almost-constant nightmares for as long as he can remember; is no longer scared of them because they are so commonplace. So, for this dream to be considered strange, it's simply because it's so very...normal. 

Alec remembers his dreams, even months after he has them, but this one he hopes he doesn't get to keep. 

He was the same age in the dream that he was in real life, standing in St. James's park in London, though he doesn't know how he recognizes it. He doesn't know _when_ it is, just that the women are wearing ridiculous dresses, and the men are wearing top hats, and that he isn't in his own time. 

It's all very impractical, in Alec's estimation, but it's...nice, he guesses? 

And then he catches sight of a man with the faintest blue sparks around his fingers, smiling at a young girl who'd been crying as he tried to cheer her up. The man is tall, and dashing, and Alec feels his cheeks heat as he watches those blue sparks that dno one but him seems to be able to see, as with a flourish there is suddenly a small flower cupped in the man's palm. 

The man is dressed better than anyone there, so there are daggers being shot his way from those that are taking the air in their best already. Alec wants to go over to him, to warn him not to let anyone else see the magic. He knows that magic like that is dangerous for people who can use it, and worries about the man. But he can't bring himself to move. 

Another man is striding up behind the first, and an instinctive fear steals over Alec at the sight of him. 

He sucks in a scared breath, and as if it's loud enough, even yards away, for the first man to hear it, his eyes flick up to where Alec is standing, flashing gold for the barest of moments before warm brown is back in place. 

In his bed when he wakes, Alec can't help but press his eyes shut once again so that he can try to memorize the image of those golden eyes. He knows he shouldn't, but he sends a prayer to the Angel that the kind man in his dream would be alright. 

~

Alec is in his teens when he realizes that the reason he isn't interested in girls is because he's interested in boys--but it's also the realization that it's not just any boy, either. 

The dreams are few and far-between, and they're never in the same time or place twice--but every time he dreams instead of having another nightmare, Alec sees the kind man with the golden eyes and the happy blue magic. 

Blue becomes Alec's favourite colour in his youth; though he never tells anyone even that much, let alone _why_. 

Alec knows that the man in his dreams is a warlock; knows that he should not be dreaming of a warlock--let alone daydreaming about him. It's even more shameful, Alec can't help but think, than the simple fact that he's not interested in girls and can't manage to pretend to be. 

Laying in his bed, Alec reflects on the dream he just woke from. He'd been in New York still, at least. In a diner that wasn't too far from the Institute, if Alec isn't mistaken about the original name of the place that Isabelle likes to sneak off to for milkshakes. In the dream, as always, he'd been the same age he is now. It had been difficult, with the vintage tinge that the diner still held, to tell if it really was the '50s, but Alec got the sense that it was. The man had slid into the booth across from him, a juxtaposition to Alec's leather jacket and blue jeans in his own slacks, button-up and vest. For as much as Alec had looked the part of the wild one in the dream, Alec knew enough to know that that wasn't the case in their relationship, whatever their relationship had been in that time, in that diner. 

"Alec!" Isabelle bangs on his bedroom door with her whole body, and Alec bites down the urge to stuff his head under his pillow. "C'mon, there's something going on! Jace Wayland is here!" 

~

For as much as he tries to shake whatever it is he feels for the man in his dreams, Alec is just as completely useless at that as he is in most everything else. 

By the time he convinces his parents that a parabatai bond with Jace would work, he has mostly talked himself into the idea that Jace is really more attractive than the man in his dreams. 

When he thinks that--every time he thinks that--he can almost hear the ghost of the man's laugh in his head. 

In his dreams, even when his dream-self knows the man--and knows him damn well--he never names him. He's had real dreams, as he's gotten older, of the fantasies that he can't chase out; but as he continues to get older, those non-dreams start to reflect those fantasies, too. He has memories of biting kisses down the column of the man's golden throat, and the desperate rush of the forbidden thing between them. 

Isabelle had told him that there would come a time when someone loved him, all of him, for who he is. Alec wants to tell her, still, that there is someone out there, he's pretty sure, that has known him for lifetimes, and has loved him through all of them. 

Alec has trained his whole life, it would seem, to be able to cut off his half of the parabatai bond, and hide what he feels. The earnest wish that it was Jace he has feelings for is bad enough; the knowledge that the real object of his affections is a warlock in his dreams--that's all the worse. 

He's nearly twenty by the time he sees what he can only assume is the first memory, chronologically.

The heat is rather oppressive, where ever they are, and the scent of jasmine and frangipani on the air is yet another thing Alec doesn't know how he recognizes. 

But he's walking into a house that there had been screams coming from just moments ago. And, before him, there is a child with golden eyes, staring up at him over the smoking ash that Alec knew had been a man--had been the man screaming. 

Alec sees the body of a woman laying behind the child, the dagger through her chest making him ache for the boy before him, for how he's trembling and scared and...and ashamed. 

In all of the dreams, Alec doesn't control what he does in them, is simply along for the ride, but now Alec has a small spark of pride in whatever incarnation of himself that he's witnessing, because Alec kneels before the boy, reaching out to offer his hand. He offers sanctuary in a language that Alec doesn't know, and the boy, tears now running freely, falls into his offered embrace. 

There are others coming, Alec knows; a mundane was killed, and the others would demand consequences be brought down on the young warlock with no thought to mercy or kindness. But if Alec could manage to spirit the boy away before they caught up to him--because they would know it was him that had spirited the boy away--then maybe this child would have the chance to grow up. 

Alec just manages to get the boy to safety before he is caught up with, and in all the dreams he'd had, this is the first time he bears witness to his own death. 

~

It's Magnus Bane. 

Alec wants to run from the meeting the second Hodge pulls up images of the warlock they're going to go see. He wants to hide from the dreams; he wants to track Magnus down himself and demand answers about whether or not Magnus knows him like he's known Magnus. 

When they get there, when Alec shoots one of the Circle members in Magnus's defense, it is somehow the worst possible thing for Alec to be asked to do, in standing under the gaze of those warm brown eyes. 

He only briefly meets them, because he doesn't want to see if there is recognition there; doesn't want to know if the complete devotion that has built up within him for all these years will come spilling out with the simplest signal that Magnus knows who he is. Magnus shakes his hand, and it's all Alec can do to focus on the chaos around them, to make sure that there's no further threat. 

In all his dreams, Alec has known what Magnus is, and in all of his dreams, Alec has acted to protect him. He's not about to deviate from that pattern now, not with Magnus real and alive in front of him. 

Over four-hundred years. Alec can only hope that the blips of his own memories of Magnus are small enough to the warlock for him not to really remember them. Because he's seen himself many times now, giving up his life for Magnus, because Magnus, whether Alec has known him for minutes or has known him for years, has always proven to be worth giving up his life for. But Alec has a duty to his siblings, and to his family; and for as much as Alec knows in his bones that Magnus is still worth it for Alec to give up everything he has to save him, Alec also knows that it's not just his life that he would be giving up, if it came to it. 

Summoning the memory demon is an exercise of bravery on Alec's part, because if the demon will demand a memory of his most-beloved person, Alec is fairly sure that he won't be able to hide that he's been in love with a man he'd only just met since his childhood. 

When the memory that is pulled forth is of Jace, Alec is almost relieved, but is also swamped with confusion. But, come to think of it; the memories he's dreamt of aren't his own, and he can't lay claim to them enough to have to give any of them up. 

"You have nothing to be ashamed of, Alexander." Magnus's voice is smooth and quiet, and Alec very nearly relaxes beneath the touch of it, but he can't afford that kind of reaction now. 

He gets Clary and the others back to the Institute, following Magnus's instructions to make sure that she's not overwhelmed any further. Once he reaches his own bedroom, Alec lets out a breath he feels as if he's been holding this whole time. 

Magnus is real. Magnus is real, and just as stunningly beautiful as Alec had always dreamt him. Magnus is real, and was flirting with him. 

In all Alec's dreams, Alec has seen how things go between them. Knows that if he lets himself lose control when it comes to Magnus Bane, then it will come to cost him his life. 

Alec doesn't want to go to sleep. Doesn't want another memory, and even the knowledge that not all sleep comes with the memories can stop the urge to keep himself awake. 

Instead, Alec sucks in a slow breath, and opens a fresh webpage on his phone, and begins, at last, to research past lives. 

~

Clary Fray has been enough of a pain in his ass already that it doesn't surprise Alec in the slightest that it's due to her that he gets called to Magnus's loft to help him save Luke's life. 

He can't bring himself to really hate her for it, though, because the second his hand touches Magnus's, it's like a dam has opened within him, and the draw of power through their joined hands brings all the things he's been working so very hard to bury raging to the fore. Magnus is comfortable against him, and bearing up under the weight of what Magnus needs in order to save Luke is the easiest thing Alec has ever done, if he's honest. 

Magnus looks at him, surprise in his eyes, and Alec wonders if Magnus can feel it, too, this rush of fear and love and comfort that Alec's only ever heard about. 

When it's done, and Alec has ordered Clary and Jace out of Magnus's so that Magnus can damn well _rest_ , Alec knows that he's made the wrong choice in getting himself time alone with the object of his temptation. 

"You know, I do have magic for that." Magnus murmurs as Alec scrubs at the blood on his brocade couch. 

"You've used more than enough tonight." Alec replies, focusing on scrubbing hard enough that his hands hurt, just to make sure that he has a point of focus. 

"Thank you, for coming to help." It sounds stilted slightly, and Alec has to fight himself from looking up. 

"Thank you for trying to save him in the first place. What do we owe you?" 

Magnus huffs, and Alec looks up finally, catching sight of him shaking his head. "Call it a repayment of an old debt." 

Magnus looks at him properly, and Alec wishes he could look away. Alec can't think of a single thing that Magnus would owe any of them for, and that simple hint that Magnus does know about the past between them is like a lead weight taking a stranglehold around Alec's heart. 

"Take a drink break, Alexander. You've earned it." 

Alec licks his lips, looking at the martini glass offered him. "I don't want to give the blood a chance to set." 

"You gave quite a bit of yourself to help me tonight. I'd have rather seen your parabatai scrubbing at that couch than seeing you spend more energy doing it yourself. And it's not uncommon for me to need to reupholster things, if it comes to that." 

"Why did you call for me? Clary or Jace...either of them could have done what I did." 

"No, not quite." Magnus replies, a hint of a smile tracing his mouth as Alec got to his feet, taking the drink. The ache in Alec's knees and his hands are enough, Alec hopes, to keep himself in check. "Jace wouldn't have been able to lend me strength the same way you did. It's rare...meeting anyone, but a Shadowhunter especially, who has an open enough heart to allow that kind of transfer. And Clary...is still more than a little angry, for the part I played in keeping her memories from her." 

Alec takes a drink, wincing at the bite of the thing, and tries to keep down the flash of pride he has at Magnus's small chuckle for his reaction.

"But what I'm more curious about...is why you came tonight." 

The intimate, soft cast of Magnus's voice shivers down Alec's spine, and he remembers the dream he had just before they'd met, when he last heard Magnus's voice like that, while they were stealing desperate kisses in a warzone in France. "I...You needed help. It was the right thing to do." 

~

It's not so much a decision as it is an act of insanity. 

Magnus is standing at the end of the aisle, warding Maryse Lightwood off with a confidence Alec wishes he could ever hope the emulate. And the next thing he knows, Alec himself is striding down the aisle towards Magnus, his voice resonant when he tells his mother, "Enough." 

And the kiss is the first one Alec's ever had--but it's also their thousandth, maybe more. He knows that the slip of his tongue along Magnus's lower lip is enough to stall out Magnus's higher brain functions; knows that Magnus's nip at his lips is a sign that Magnus has forgotten where they're standing, and feels playful and happy. Alec forgets where they're standing a little bit, too; a memory that isn't his replaying in the back of his mind, of what Alec has guessed was the first time any version of him had gotten to kiss Magnus. When he'd woken from that memory on Magnus's couch, light stabbing through his hangover, it'd almost been too much to bear. And now, he is just giving in to it. 

The fallout of kissing Magnus is simultaneously exactly what Alec expects, and is also at least a little better than it would have been had he done this in any other lifetime. Magnus stands with him through most of it, and even when he has to go, the memory of Magnus's hand in his has Alec straight-backed and broad-shouldered against anything his parents choose to throw at him. 

When Isabelle catches up to him, and halfway abducts him away from the Institute, Alec can only be thankful for a sister that hasn't ever needed to play by the rules. 

Alec is still in most of his tux when he washes ashore on the doorstep of Magnus's loft, and when he walks in, he feels as if he can breathe again. 

Magnus is smiling at him, and Alec wonders if this is how a moon feels, trapped in the gravitational pull that he will never be able to break away from. 

"I think I might technically be a fugitive right now." Alec jokes, and Magnus's answering laugh is worth whatever more he has to go through for having embarrassed his parents in front of the Clave. 

"I'm more than happy to harbour you here, Alexander, never fear." 

Alec ducks in, stealing a kiss from Magnus while he has the bravery to, and he can taste Magnus's smile in the simple press of their lips together. 

There is decades worth of history built up under Alec's skin, and he doesn't know how he's meant to be able to stop himself from declaring to Magnus then and there the devotion that's hunted him down through all the memories that haunt him. 

"I...I don't regret it." Alec finds himself answering a question that Magnus had asked him between interrogations and recriminations, and Magnus looks a little stunned to hear it. 

Alec doesn't know how much Magnus knows; if he remembers the lives they've lived together, or if Magnus isn't aware that it's _him_ in there--that Alec is the same soul that gave his life to keep Magnus safe as a child. 

"I want...to get to know you." Alec murmurs, and Magnus smiles at him, so it's the right thing to say. 

"Something tells me that you haven't had much call to enjoy a quiet night in with a good movie." Magnus offers his hand, and Alec tries valiantly not to let how nervous he is to show. "Would you like me to conjure you up something actually comfortable to wear first?" 

Alec blushes, looking down at himself. In the time Magnus had been home, he'd changed from the beautiful suit; standing next to him, Alec feels like he's never been more out of place and uncomfortable about it. 

Magnus snaps his fingers, and offers the resulting bundle of folded clothes to Alec. "You can get changed through there," Magnus nods towards his bedroom, "while I get us something to eat. I'm guessing you haven't been given a chance to do that much at all today." 

"Thank you." Alec breathes, and he knows that the smile he's wearing is showing too much of the history that he shouldn't be carrying; knows that looking at Magnus the way he is already is ludicrously fast, and he needs to slow down. But Magnus had told him in this very room that Alec had unlocked something within him, and now that he's properly fallen into Magnus's orbit, Alec can't summon the will to play pretend. 

Magnus is reluctant to let Alec's hand go, and Alec likes that more than even he thinks it prudent to admit. 

Taking the clothes into Magnus's bedroom, Alec lets himself look around at the blatant hedonism in the room. Even in the memories where times were so tough as to be impossible, Alec knows that Magnus delighted in whatever pleasure he could squeeze from life; and this room is a testament to that holding true even now. 

Alec doesn't know when, exactly, Magnus started wearing makeup as he does now--but he does know it's something of a mask for Magnus to hide behind. That knowledge draws him towards Magnus's vanity, his shirt half-unbuttoned, but the reason he came in here almost forgotten. 

Almost forgotten because there is a picture, leaning against the bottom of the mirror, and Alec feels like he's about to keel over. 

It's Alec. Or, it's one of Alec's past lives. He tries to pinpoint the differences in their appearance, but it's so slight that it's almost non-existent. 

The man in the photo, Alec can tell, is looking at Magnus behind the camera. It's old enough that Alec knows that he would have had to sit for a very long time in that position, but the tiny smile curling at his mouth tells him that Magnus is there. 

Alec doesn't touch it; though he wonders what his name had been, then. Wonders just how deeply in love with Magnus this version of himself had been. 

Instead, Alec finishes getting changed into a comfortable henley and loose, warm sweats, briefly considering throwing the remnants of the tux in the trash, because if he knew anything, it was that _that_ had not suited him. 

"Alexander?" Magnus knocks softly. 

"Yeah, sorry. Just...how disappointed in me would you be if I threw this thing out?" Alec asks, gesturing to the tux as Magnus gently pushes the door open. 

Magnus has a look on his face, somewhere between fondness and confusion, and Alec knits their hands together again. "I don't see any way in which I'd be disappointed in you, Alexander. But I will say, you do look good in a tux." 

Alec huffs, kissing Magnus on the cheek. Magnus wriggles the fingers of his free hand, and the pieces of Alec's suit disappear, Alec does not care where. 

"Everything else okay?" 

"Yeah," Alec breathes, and then steels himself slightly, "I just...I've never done this before. I never wanted to feel like I--like I'm messed up, for growing up at the Institute. You're on the receiving end of the mother of all first-date nerves." 

Magnus's smile is lovely, and he cups a hand on Alec's cheek, "Thank you for forewarning me about the jitters. But you're not messed up, Alexander. Not at all." 

Alec doesn't tell Magnus that that's only half the reason he's never dated. That the other half is that he was never interested in anyone besides Magnus enough to force himself into it. 

They share a soft press of lips, and Magnus leads Alec to his living room and the feast awaiting them in front of the opening frames of a movie. 

In all Alec's memories, he doesn't think he's ever seen himself with Magnus like this. But as they settle in together, he hopes, for the sake of every life he's lived before, that these quiet, easy moments have always been there, too. 

~

The information that Magnus has had somewhere around 17000 other lovers in the past is jarring to Alec, but for as much as he knows that he couldn't have been a majority of that number, he also has to figure that he's the one that Magnus has come back to, no matter what past lives Alec has led. 

It's something that neither of them talk about, the past lives. Alec's not sure what the protocol is for things like this, so he takes Magnus's lead, and thinks of it almost like a game between them, surprising each other with the foreknowledge they haven't admitted they have. 

There's a painting of Alec hidden in Magnus's apothecary; the empty space where it had hung clear, and Alec has to figure that Magnus moved it thinking that it'd make Alec uncomfortable. There are more photographs, over the years; some of them of the two of them together, but most of them just of whoever Alec had been at the time. 

It is only when they get into a fight about moving in together--about Alec's mortality, and how fast they are moving--that Alec realizes the kind of pain he's been the one to put Magnus through. 

Magnus had told him that he'd cut himself off for feeling anything for anyone for almost a century--and Alec realizes, thinking about the timeline he's been trying to piece together of them, that Magnus and his past lives had stopped being _together_ in Alec's memories around that time. They'd seen each other. Were even friends. But the pain that Alec put Magnus through, of an immortal loving a mortal, had been enough that Magnus had worked hard not to let himself fall in love with any of his reincarnations or anyone else in nearly a century. 

It is a realization that leaves Alec paralyzed. He loathes, to the very depths of his soul, the idea of hurting Magnus any further. But he also knows that Magnus, for whatever reason, was willing to take a chance on him again; and wouldn't it be worth it, to trust Magnus's happiness to Magnus's choice? 

"Izzy," Alec knows he shouldn't ask; knows that he will be revealing too much, even to his sister, but when Alec's mind strays, it strays to the pain Magnus _expects_ to have to bear, "could I talk to you for a minute?" 

The last time Alec had been this shifty, he'd been asking about knowing when he was ready to have sex with Magnus, and the mixture of cruel amusement and overwrought worry that she puts on makes it very clear that she remembers that. 

Alec sucks in a slow breath, hesitating for a moment before he reaches into his pocket and pulls out one of the photographs of one of his older selves; the one that Alec had stumbled over in Magnus's rarely-used desk. "I started having...memories, when I was six." Alec begins, and Isabelle's eyes snap from the photo to Alec, wide and slightly horrified. "Memories of Magnus." 

Isabelle takes the photo carefully, sitting back to get better light to look at it closely. "This, at least, explains a bit about why my overthinking older brother has lost all reason when it comes to his boyfriend." 

Alec bites back his snark in response to that, and rolls his eyes instead, "Izzy, I can't tell you how many lives I've lived...but in all of them, I've had to leave him behind eventually...I've died, and left him alone." 

Isabelle's expression is mingled pain and horror and a wish that she didn't know what Alec was asking for, and Alec can't help but love his sister for it. 

"I need to find a way not to leave him again." 

"Hermano--" 

"Isabelle, listen to me...I love him. I have loved him for lifetimes. And...I hurt him enough by being mortal that he cut himself off from feeling anything for a long time." 

"You can't base this decision just on Magnus, Alec." Isabelle hisses, "That's not healthy, and I won't help you--"

"Izzy, I want his forever with him. I want...to raise kids with him. I want to force the world to change in the way we've been changing it, and watch it grow for the better by his side. My decision is based on him, I won't lie about that. But do you really think that your overthinking older brother hasn't already thought about what the consequences will be, and decided that they're worth it?" 

Isabelle subsides, staring at the picture. "Does Magnus know you're asking me to look for a way to make you immortal?" 

"No." Alec admits, and swallows at the look Isabelle shoots him, "Until I have a way to do it, I don't want him to know I'm looking." 

"You do realize he'd be one of the best resources for this, right?" 

"Yes, but...Magnus and I haven't really talked about...the past lives. We haven't actually acknowledged it. I don't want to drag up the pain he's been through in the past by losing me until I have a way to keep myself from being lost." 

Isabelle glances from Alec to the picture, taking a deep breath, "You should tell him...that this is what you're thinking of. That you're willing to put yourself through the pain he's suffered in losing people, if it means you're not going to be one of his losses." Isabelle offers a tiny smile, "I can't think of a better way for you to show him just how much you love him." 

~

It's not until after they're married that Alec comes to the realization that Magnus hasn't mentioned Alec's past lives because he thinks that Alec doesn't remember them. 

It says something about who Alec is now, that this is the version of him that Magnus is ready to marry; and Alec is hoping against hope that this is the life in which he'll be able to find a way to make it last forever. But when Alec realizes that Magnus doesn't know about his memories, it gives Alec the uncomfortable realization that if Magnus hasn't been expecting him to remember, it would indicate that Alec hasn't remembered any time before. 

And if Alec hadn't remembered any time before, it meant that Alec _has to_ make sure that he finds a way, because losing what they have, with no real hope of getting it back, is not a fate Alec is willing to risk. 

It's months after this revelation before Alec invites Magnus to the diner near the Institute. He buys himself a pair of jeans he thinks are just about the right shade of blue to the ones he'd seen in the memory of them in that diner, and when Izzy catches sight of him walking out of his last meeting, dressed like the memory of himself, she shoots him a look, but doesn't ask. 

He'd barely been a teenager in that memory, and Magnus and he hadn't been more than friends since Alec had taken a bullet for Magnus in France in 1917; but it is the easiest one to recreate. 

Magnus walks in and stops dead at the sight of him, a mixture of agony and shock flashing over his face before he forces himself to smile at his husband. 

"You look delicious, darling." Magnus purrs, leaning in to kiss Alec with a chastity that Alec knows stems from the memories Magnus thinks he carries alone, and Alec hates that chastity with a burning passion. "Felt like having a milkshake? Isabelle said this place has good ones." 

"They've never been in order, so I'm not precisely sure, but you and I met here in 1956, when I was fourteen, because you caught me hunting without backup, and saved my life." Alec sounds more steady than he feels, and Magnus falls into the booth across from him as if Alec just physically swept his legs out from under him. "That last part is the guess...I remember fighting with you, a couple years later--I assumed when you told me that I was too precious by half to act as recklessly as I always did, that that was what you were referring to." 

"You..." Magnus swallows audibly, looks away, and Alec reaches across the table, taking Magnus's hand and playing with his wedding ring. 

"Since I was six...well, maybe before that? I don't have the clearest memory before I was six, so I'm not entirely sure." 

Magnus's eyes fly wide, the fear on his face stark. 

"I was in love with you before we even met." Alec is _married_ to him, but it's still difficult for him to admit this. "When the memory demon took a memory of Jace, I was just relieved it didn't touch the dreams I'd already had of you." Alec raises Magnus's knuckles to his lips, the kiss including the ring that he loves seeing on Magnus more than anything. "I...I assume that I've never remembered, before?" 

Magnus shakes his head in the negative, and Alec steels himself against the heartbreak in Magnus's eyes. 

"I would tease you for having a type--and me being that type--but I'd rather hear what you're thinking right now." 

Magnus blinks, looking down at their hands on the linoleum between them, "You...Is one of your memories catching me looking at a photograph of an older you?" 

"No," Alec can't help his chuckle at the image that brings up, "but I take it that I've caught on before, then?" 

Magnus nods, lips in a tight line, "You...You hated it, when you did. Every time, it was--you're always so concerned about...about the pain you're going to cause me. And you--you keep dying, usually saving my life." 

"So you tried to hide it, this time." Alec surmises, then smiles, "You are really terrible at finding hiding places for your mementos of me, Magnus." 

Magnus flinches, ducking his gaze, "I...before we met, I used them as a reminder. Not to let myself get calcified and heartless, but also not to lose my heart completely." 

Alec hums and flips Magnus's hand so that it's palm-up and he can trace the lines of it. 

"I can't believe...well, I suppose I can believe you knew all this time. It explains a lot, come to think of it." 

"I wasn't sure I wasn't crazy, at first." Alec allows, "But it made things better, for me. You weren't my first relationship because we'd already had dozens of them." 

"And here I thought that you went into it with such abandon because you hadn't had any relationships hurt you in the past." Magnus muses. 

Alec licks his lips, sitting forward and keeping Magnus's gaze, "I keep dying to save you, you said. I remember those times. And, knowing all of those times? I still stand by the fact that you're worth it, Magnus." Magnus flinches again, and Alec trails his fingers over the soft of his wrist, "But, this time around? I'd like to try to save you by making sure you don't have to go through that pain again." Alec reaches to the bag he'd brought in with him, pulling out the file that had taken, with five people working on it, cumulative years for them to find. "I thought you already knew...So when I went to Isabelle, to ask for her help looking--well, my sister knew about the past-life memories thing before you did, sorry." 

Magnus's hand shakes as he reaches for the paper. 

"And when Catarina and Mom found out I was looking for this, they wanted to pitch in, too. And then all four of us were searching for things, and Underhill took one look at our attempts at correlating our research, and...I'm pretty sure that half the miraculously 'cancelled' meetings I've had over the last year and a half have been down to his interference to allow me to get home early to you, he's just that good at managing the chaos." 

Magnus huffs a wet laugh, the words on the page the only thing he seems able to focus on for the moment. 

"I told Isabelle that...I want your forever with you. I'd like...to have the chance to raise a few warlock children with you. And I like this world we're making, Magnus. I want to be there to see it." Alec swallows, rubbing his thumb over Magnus's wedding ring over and over again. "So, I have to ask. Because I've convinced Isabelle, and Mom, and Catarina...I have to ask if you'd be willing to spend your forever with me?" 

Alec already knows that no matter what the answer is, he's going to make the choice to become immortal. It's how they got here, after all. 

The magic is old, and it's dangerous; and Alec had been a little in awe of it when Catarina had first brought it to him. Underhill had been the one to stumble on a mention of it; a curse that was meant to erase someone from time, twisted in order to erase time from someone. Catarina had had reservations about what that meant, but it had immediately clicked for Alec, keeping in mind that Magnus didn't know he'd remembered--that he'd never remembered before. The price of erasing time for him was that the barrier between the lives he'd lived and this life were wiped away. Alec knows the choice he makes, because he had already made it.

**Author's Note:**

> You can SUPER blame [Katka](https://giidas.tumblr.com/) for this one, because I asked her to talk me out of it. 
> 
> Anywhoodles, this concludes the things I told Katka I would write for her. If you have any requests, hit me up on [Tumblr](https://wirewrappedlily.tumblr.com/). I make no promises, but if the muse strikes, I am more than happy.


End file.
